Defending Its Rankings, U.S. News Takes Aim at Top Law Schools

The publication accuses Yale and other schools of trying to evade accountability — and sidestep a likely end to affirmative action — by opting out of its ratings.

March 3, 2023, 5:00 a.m. ET

Harvard Law School is among the institutions that decided to stop giving data to U.S. News.Vanessa Leroy for The New York Times

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U.S. News & World Report said little last fall as Yale, Harvard and other elite law schools announced that they would no longer submit data to the publication’s rankings, charging that the influential list was an engine of inequality.

But in the last few days, U.S. News has fired back. In a public-relations campaign, the publication has accused the schools of trying to avoid accountability on admissions and outcomes for students, and it connected the boycott to a looming Supreme Court decision that could end affirmative action.

“Some law deans are already exploring ways to sidestep any restrictive ruling by reducing their emphasis on test scores and grades — criteria used in our rankings,” Eric J. Gertler, the executive chairman and chief executive of U.S. News, wrote in an opinion essay on Tuesday in The Wall Street Journal.

The conflict is a sign that U.S. News will not shy away from vigorously defending the rankings, which are criticized by many universities but are popular with families — making them potentially another flash point in the country’s divisive debate over education issues.

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On Wednesday, Harvard Law School held a conference on the rankings that was largely critical and alluded to some of the schools’ complaints: that the rankings used a misleading measure of student debt that schools could game by admitting more paying students; that the emphasis on grades and test scores encouraged merit aid, to the detriment of need-based aid; and that the methodology undermined efforts to support public interest careers for graduates. (U.S. News has already promised to address some of those criticisms.)

At the conference, the keynote speaker, Miguel Cardona, the education secretary, attacked the publication. “It’s time to stop worshiping at the false altar of U.S. News & World Report,” he said. “It’s time to focus on what truly matters — delivering value and upward mobility.”

But U.S. News had already responded that morning, in a full-page advertisement in The Boston Globe. In an open letter to Mr. Cardona, the publication defended the rankings and called for law schools to release even more data. It took a dig at the high cost of getting a law degree, saying, “As tuition continues to skyrocket, students require reliable information to guide them in their decision-making process.”

Mr. Gertler’s opinion essay, published the day before, was even sharper, suggesting that elite law and medical schools wanted to be able to admit students with lower test scores and grades if, as expected, the Supreme Court were to rule against affirmative action in two cases now pending against Harvard and the University of North Carolina.

The schools say their complaints are based on principle.

“We have never paid attention to U.S. News and its rankings,” Heather Gerken, the dean of Yale Law School, said in an interview on Thursday. “What we are talking about are the values of legal education and the profession.”

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Mr. Gertler, of U.S. News, said the goal of the rankings was to use data to measure the return on investment for students, not necessarily to measure the values that deans wanted to inculcate.

“We value public interest service,” he said in an interview on Thursday. “But many go to law school to go into private practice, so that needs to be measured too.”

The revolt against the rankings began in November, as Yale Law School announced that it would no longer cooperate by giving data to U.S. News. Harvard followed within hours, joined within days by the law schools at Stanford, Georgetown, Columbia and the University of California, Berkeley, with more to follow. Among the schools that dropped out were many that had consistently been in the top 14 of the U.S. News list, out of about 200 schools.

In January, Harvard Medical School announced that it would also withdraw from the rankings, and other elite medical schools, like those at Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania, followed.

Some law school deans said that the rankings had helped distinguish them in the eyes of prospective students.

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Peter B. Rutledge, dean of the University of Georgia law school, said his school would continue to participate in the rankings because they are a source of consumer information and because in the past, they had showcased the relatively low student debt of the school’s graduates. After the law schools announced their boycott, U.S. News said it would no longer consider student debt or spending per student.

“That is the subject of every kitchen table conversation that applicants and their families have in deciding to pursue a law degree,” Mr. Rutledge said.

He argued that a school like his, which he said leaves nearly half of its graduates debt-free, “is doing a better job for society” than schools that send graduates into public service jobs where loans will be forgiven after 10 years.

But, he added, the U.S. News rankings did not influence the school’s policies. “I categorically reject that proposition,” he said. “We all just have to do a hard job with a certain amount of moral courage.”

At the conference, the big question was: If law schools abandoned the U.S. News rankings en masse, what would replace them as a guide for consumers?

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Ms. Gerken, the Yale Law School dean, and other participants suggested that the data gathered by the American Bar Association already provided good information for prospective applicants. The data provided on the bar association website, however, does not allow someone to easily compare one law school with another, and it lacks the emotional punch of number rankings like the one used by U.S. News.

Other data sources that participants suggested, such as Law School Transparency, XploreJD and the Law School Admission Council, are similarly cumbersome.

One of the panelists, Deidré A. Keller, dean and professor of law at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, a historically Black university in Tallahassee, said that the rankings’ emphasis on LSAT scores, grade point averages and selectivity was “inherently problematic” for her school. To make selectivity a hallmark of quality, she added, “we would have to be acting against our mission.”

More important, she said, was the support students received from the school to succeed.

“We have a mission to diversify the profession,” she said. At least one panelist, though, warned that a new ranking system might not be the answer. Christopher Norio Avery, who teaches microeconomics and statistics at Harvard’s Kennedy School, said changing the system “has exciting upside possibilities, but may have a range of unintended consequences.”

Alain Delaquérière contributed research“

Native Hawaiians face sentencing in a crime that exposed the state's racial complexity

The Associated Press 

March 2, 20239:29 AM ET

Chico Kaonohi, left, prays with Priscilla Hoʻopiʻi, center, and Lana Vierra, right, in November 2022 outside U.S. District Court in Honolulu, after his Native Hawaiian son was found guilty of a hate crime in the 2014 beating of a white man.

Jennifer Sinco Kelleher/AP

HONOLULU — In a case that reflects Hawaii's nuanced and complicated relationship with race, two Native Hawaiian men are scheduled to be sentenced Thursday for a federal hate crime in the brutal beating of a white man who tried to move into their remote, traditional fishing village.

A jury convicted Kaulana Alo-Kaonohi and Levi Aki Jr. in November, finding that they were motivated by Christopher Kunzelman's race when they punched, kicked and used a shovel to beat him in 2014. His injuries included a concussion, two broken ribs and head trauma.

Local lawyers believe this is the first time the U.S. has prosecuted Native Hawaiians for hate crimes. The unique case highlights the struggles between Native Hawaiians who are adamant about not having their culture erased and people who move to Hawaii without knowing or considering its history and racial dynamics.

Tensions began over a dilapidated, oceanfront home in Kahakuloa, a small village off a narrow road of hairpin turns and sweeping ocean views at the end of a valley on Maui, an island known for luxurious resorts.

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Growing up in the village, Alo-Kaonohi would "hunt, fish, farm, live off the land," he wrote in a letter to U.S. District Judge J. Michael Seabright. "To make a little money, I would sell coconuts, mango, flowers, bananas on the side of the road to tourists who would be passing through to see the beautiful scenery of Kahakuloa."

Kunzelman and his wife purchased the house sight-unseen for $175,000 because she wanted to leave Scottsdale, Arizona, to live near the ocean after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

"We loved Maui; we loved the people," Lori Kunzelman told The Associated Press, describing how her husband planned to fix up the house himself.

He was starting to do that when the attack happened, she said.

"It was obviously a hate crime from the very beginning," she said. "The whole time they're saying things like, 'You have the wrong skin color. No 'haole' is ever going to live in our neighborhood.'"

"Haole," a Hawaiian word with meanings that include foreigner and white person, is central to the case. It's a word often misunderstood by people who don't comprehend Hawaii's history of U.S. colonization and the 1893 overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom by a group of American businessmen, said Judy Rohrer, author of a book titled "Haoles in Hawai'i."

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White people who move to Hawaii are unaccustomed to being identified racially and are "not used to thinking about whiteness," said Rohrer, who grew up white in Hawaii and is now a professor at Eastern Washington University. "We're used to being in the majority and then we get to Hawaii and all of a sudden we're not in the majority, and that makes us uncomfortable."

Of Hawaii's 1.5 million residents, about 38% are Asian, 26% are white, 2% are Black, and many people are multiple ethnicities, according to U.S. census figures. Native Hawaiians account for about 20% of the population.

But it's more than racial, Rohrer said, explaining how the Hawaiian word has become part of Hawaii Pidgin, the creole language of the islands, to describe behavior or attitudes not in sync with local culture.

"Acting haole" means "acting out of entitlement, and like you own the place," she said.

In video recorded by cameras on Kunzelman's vehicle parked under the house, only one racial utterance can be heard, defense attorneys said. Aki is heard saying, "You's a haole, eh."

Kunzelman testified that what's not audible in the video is the men calling him "haole" in a derogatory way.

After the assault, Aki referred to Kunzelman to police as a "rich Haole guy," a "dumb haole," and a "typical haole thinking he owning everything ... trying to change things up in Kahakuloa," prosecutors said.

Tiare Lawrence, a Native Hawaiian community advocate on Maui, said she doesn't condone the attack but is deeply familiar with the tensions that permeate the case.

"The threat of outsiders coming in ... brings a lot of sadness for Hawaiians who are trying so hard to hold on to what little piece of paradise we have left," she said. As an example, she cited efforts to revitalize the Hawaiian language after it was banned in schools in the wake of the overthrow.

Attorneys for Aki and Alo-Kaonohi say it wasn't Kunzelman's race that provoked them, but his entitled and disrespectful attitude.

Kunzelman came to the village saying he wanted to help residents improve their homes and boost property values, without considering that higher property values come with higher property taxes in a state with the highest cost of living, the defense attorneys said. But the tipping point came when Kunzelman cut locks to village gates, they said.

Kunzelman testified he did so because residents were locking him in and out. He testified that he wanted to provide the village with better locks and distribute keys to residents.

In a letter to the judge, Aki said he doesn't see himself as racist: "Not only because I am almost half-Caucasian but also because I have people who I love and care about who are white."

Both men were prosecuted in state court for the assault. Alo-Kaonohi pleaded no contest to felony assault and was sentenced to probation, while Aki pleaded no contest to terroristic threatening and was sentenced to probation and nearly 200 days in jail.

Alo-Kaonohi was also sentenced to a year in prison for an assault at a Maui bar soon after the Kunzelman attack.

For the federal hate crime, prosecutors are asking for a sentence of about nine years for Alo-Kaonohi and six-and-a-half years for Aki.

Lori Kunzelman acknowledged being unaware of Hawaiian history and said she has since learned about it.

"But attacking an individual white man doesn't change history or improve things or justify actions on anybody's part," she said.

The Kunzelmans still own the Kahakuloa home but split their time between Arizona and Puerto Rico.

"We couldn't even sell it to anybody because it's not safe," Lori Kunzelman said. "It's not safe because of the animosity that's there."

In an attempt to convey the animosity, prosecutors during the trial portrayed village residents as saying things like, "this is a Hawaiian village," and "the only thing coming from the outside is electricity."

But several non-Hawaiians who live or have lived peacefully in the village told the AP they never had problems.

"I am 82 years old. I have lived here for 50 years," said Bruce Turnbull, a white, retired teacher who lives near Alo-Kaonohi's family. "I've learned in Hawaii, coming from the outside in, it's a good thing to live by the people around you and not tell them to live by you and your values."

Joy Reid: DeSantis’ people came to America in 20th century from disfavor...

Outcry after New York mayor dismisses separation of church and state | Eric Adams | The Guardian

Outcry after New York mayor dismisses separation of church and state

"Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

How stupid can Eric Adams be.  That's right he is a former cop's IQ is only 104.  Average IQ is 100-110

Eric Adams says ‘Don’t tell me about no separation of church and state’ at an interfaith breakfast

Martin Pengelly

Eric Adams delivers remarks at his annual interfaith breakfast at the New York Public Library on Tuesday in New York City. Photograph: Erik Pendzich/Rex/Shutterstock

Civil rights groups blasted the mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, after he said he believed God had made him mayor, appeared to support compulsory prayer in public schools and said: “Don’t tell me about no separation of church and state.”

The head of the New York Civil Liberties Union led the condemnation.

“We are a nation and a city of many faiths and no faith,” Donna Lieberman said. “In order for our government to truly represent us, it must not favor any belief over another, including non-belief.”

The mayor made the controversial remarks at an interfaith breakfast at the New York Public Library on Tuesday.

Discussing his rise to power, the former police officer said he “strongly believe[d] in all my heart” that “God said, ‘I’m going to take the most broken person and I’m going to elevate him to the place of being the mayor of the most powerful city on the globe.’ He could have made me the mayor of Topeka, Kansas.”

The voters of New York City elected Adams as mayor in 2021, by a comfortable margin over the Republican Curtis Sliwa and after winning a crowded primary in the solidly Democratic city.

Adams’s time in office has proved controversial, from his approach to tackling crime, homelessness and sanitation, to allegations of nepotism, inconsistent veganism and bizarre remarks about how cheese is addictive.

At the prayer breakfast, Adams also said “When we took prayers out of schools, guns came into schools” and “Don’t tell me about no separation of church and state”.

He added: “State is the body, church is the heart. You take the heart out of the body, the body dies. I can’t separate my belief because I’m an elected official.”

Lieberman pointed to the US constitution.

“The very opening passage of the Bill of Rights makes clear that church and state must be separate,” she said.

“On matters of faith, the mayor is entitled to his own beliefs. On the constitution, he must uphold his oath.”

An Adams spokesperson said the mayor “personally believes all of our faiths would ensure we are humane to one another.

“While everyone in the room immediately understood what the mayor meant, it’s unfortunate that some have attempted to hijack the narrative in an effort to misrepresent the mayor’s comments.”

Rachel Laser, president and chief executive of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said: “It’s especially disheartening to hear the mayor of New York city promoting rightwing, Christian Nationalist talking points about prayer solving gun violence.

“Not only is it simply untrue that prayer alone will end school shootings, but his words ignore the fact that students are free to voluntarily pray in public schools because of the separation of church and state.”

"To Messrs. Nehemiah Dodge and Others

A Committee of the Danbury Baptist Association in the State of Connecticut

January 1, 1802

Gentlemen,

The affectionate sentiments of esteem and approbation which you are so good as to express towards me, on behalf of the Danbury Baptist Association, give me the highest satisfaction. My duties dictate a faithful and zealous pursuit of the interests of my constituents, and in proportion as they are persuaded of my fidelity to those duties, the discharge of them becomes more and more pleasing.

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between church and State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.

I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection and blessing of the common Father and Creator of man, and tender you for yourselves and your religious association, assurances of my high respect and esteem.

Thomas Jefferson
President of the United States"

Too Smart To Be A Cop?

September 10, 1999 / 11:47 AM

Forty-five-year-old Corrections Officer Robert Jordan believes he has been discriminated against after the city of New London, Conn., deemed him too smart to be an enforcement officer and denied him employment.

After he filed a lawsuit, the federal judge dismissed it, ruling that the police department's rejection of Jordan did not violate his rights. Jordan strongly disagrees and tells CBS This Morning's Thalia Assuras why. 

---

"I was just taken aback," Jordan says.  "Philosophically, I found it offensive to the entire profession of law enforcement. We all know talented, intelligent people that pursue successful careers in law enforcement."

In May 1997 Jordan filed a lawsuit against the New London Police Department for denying him the opportunity of becoming a law enforcement officer in the city where he was born and raised and which he still lives nearby.

"I just couldn't accept it. And I found out there is absolutely no evidence.Â…There is no connection between your basic intelligence and job satisfaction or longevity on the job," he says.

Jordan was deemed too smart for the police force because he received a high score on an intelligence test. Jordan, then 45, scored a 33, the equivalent of having an IQ of 125. 

The average score nationally for police officers as well as for office workers, bank tellers and salespeople is 21 or 22, the equivalent of having an IQ of 104.

The city's rationale for the long-standing practice is that candidates who score too high could get bored with police work and quit after undergoing costly academy training.

Recently U.S. District Judge Peter C. Dorsey ruled the New London Police Department's rejection of Jordan, because of his high IQ test score, was not in violation of his rights. 

The court dismissed his lawsuit Aug. 31 and his attorney informed him on Wednesday.

Jordan feels the New London policy is ludicrous primarily because the city, through President Clinton's Fast Cop Program, received federal money to hire new recruits for the police academy, he says.

"I don't think it's setting really good seeds for the future of [its] public employees in the town, " he adds.

Jordan is not new to law enforcement. He had served as a part-time officer in Groton Long Point, Conn., in 1989. 

In 1993 he became a seasonal officer for the Department of Environmental Protection, which takes care of law enforcement in state parks. He never took off a single shift, he says. 

Jordan was never late and he felt he really did his job well. So when he decided to try for his local police force, he thought it could turn into something good, he says.

He is currently a corrections officer for the state of Connecticut, on the line, in direct contact with prisoners. 

Jordan would love to appeal but the cost of litigation may be too much for him, although he has not ruled out the option, he says."

Outcry after New York mayor dismisses separation of church and state | Eric Adams | The Guardian

Opinion | The Spectacular Fall of Lori Lightfoot and the Politics of Race and Crime - The New York Times

The Spectacular Fall of Lori Lightfoot and the Politics of Race and Crime

March 1, 2023, 12:24 p.m. ET

Akilah Townsend for The New York Times 

"It was a stunning rebuke. On Tuesday, Mayor Lori Lightfoot of Chicago, the first Black woman and first openly L.G.B.T.Q.+ person to lead the city, failed to advance to a runoff, earning just 17 percent of the vote and becoming the first incumbent mayor in 40 years to lose a re-election bid.

Four days before the election, I interviewed Lightfoot in her Chicago office. The space, with its soaring ceiling, was a clash of aesthetics, like many government buildings, displaying a kind of prudent grandeur, evoking the gravitas of the office without signaling excess, much like Lightfoot herself, who settled her small frame, dressed in a smart gray suit, into a large chair.

During our nearly hourlong interview, she choked up and fought back tears when discussing the sacrifices her parents had made for her and her siblings. A smile lit her face when talked about all the memes that had made her a folk hero in the early days of her term, and she puffed with pride when discussing her proudest moments as mayor, including how she and her team had dealt with the Covid-19 crisis.

But those weren’t the reasons I’d trekked to the frigid city on the lake. I’d come because Lightfoot belongs to a group of recently elected Black mayors of major American cities, including Eric Adams in New York, Sylvester Turner in Houston and Karen Bass in Los Angeles.

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In those cities, Black people are outnumbered by other nonwhite groups, and in New York City and Chicago their ranks are dwindling.

Each of these four mayors was elected or re-elected around the height of two seismic cultural phenomena — Black Lives Matter and the pandemic. Of the four, Lightfoot would be one of the first to face voters and test the fallout. (Turner is term-limited and can’t run again.)

It clearly did not go well.

On one level, the results of Tuesday’s election speak to how potent the issue of crime can be and how it can be used as a scare tactic. Lightfoot said that it was absolutely used as a political tool in her race: “You’ve got people who are using it as a cudgel against me every single day. You’ve got the only white candidate in the race who’s acting like he’s going to be a great white savior on public safety.”

That white candidate is Paul Vallas, who finished at the top of the crowded field on Tuesday with 34 percent of the vote. Vallas had run a tough-on-crime, law-and-order campaign in which he told one crowd that his “whole campaign is about taking back our city, pure and simple.”

Lightfoot called the remark “the ultimate dog whistle.”

In our interview, she was brutal in her racial assessment of Vallas: “He is giving voice and platform to people who are hateful of anyone who isn’t white and Republican in our city, in our country.” She is also surprisingly candid about how race operates in the city itself: “Chicago is a deeply divided and segregated city.”

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It is that division, in her view, fomented by candidates who see politics in the city as a zero-sum game, that provided Vallas with an opening to win over the city’s white citizens. As she put it, “People who are not used to feeling the touch of violence, particularly people on the North Side of our city, they are buying what he’s selling.”

Indeed, Vallas won many of the wards in the northern part of the city, while Lightfoot won most of the wards on the largely Black South Side of town.

But two things can be true simultaneously: There can be legitimate concerns about rising crime, and crime can be used as a political wedge issue, particularly against elected officials of color, which has happened often.

In this moment, when the country has still not come to grips with the wide-ranging societal trauma that the pandemic exacerbated and unleashed, mayors are being held responsible for that crime. If all politics is local, crime and safety are the most local. And when the perception of crime collides with ingrained societal concepts of race and gender, politicians, particularly Black women, can pay the price.

In 2021, Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms of Atlanta chose not to seek re-election, becoming the city’s first Black mayor to serve only a single term, after wrestling with what she called the “Covid crime wave.” Mayor LaToya Cantrell of New Orleans is facing a possible recall, largely over the issue of crime in her city, and organizers said this week that they have gathered enough signatures to force a recall vote.

Even in cities where Black mayors aren’t likely to be removed from office, their opponents are searching for ways to limit their power, using criminal justice as justification.

The Mississippi House recently passed a bill that would create a separate court system and an expanded police force in the city of Jackson, one of the blackest cities in America. The new district “would incorporate all of the city’s significantly populated white-majority neighborhoods,” as an analysis by The Guardian pointed out. Jackson’s mayor, Chokwe Antar Lumumba, said the plan reminded him of apartheid.

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Crime often comes in waves, but a question lingers about how people, even liberals, respond when a crest arrives under Black leadership: Are Black mayors too quickly and easily blamed for rising crime, and if so, why? Because of an unwillingness to crack down on criminals, or because of a more insidious, latent belief in ineffectual Black leadership in times of crisis?

Lightfoot told me she understood that as a woman and as a person of color, “I’m always going to be viewed through a different lens, that the things I do and say, that the toughness that I exhibit, is viewed as divisive, that I’m the mean mayor, that I can’t collaborate with anyone.”

Even so, she conceded, “If you feel like your life has been challenged because of the public safety issues coming to your doorstep, it doesn’t matter what the numbers are, you need to feel safe.”

But feelings on issues of politics, crime and race also tap into our biases, both conscious and subconscious. In that vein, Lightfoot may be a harbinger, or at least a warning, for the other big-city Black mayors: As the Covid crime wave wears on, will their mostly non-Black citizens feel that their safety is being prioritized and secured under Black leadership?

Charles M. Blow joined The Times in 1994 and became an Opinion columnist in 2008. He is also a television commentator and writes often about politics, social justice and vulnerable communities. @CharlesMBlow • Facebook"

Opinion | The Spectacular Fall of Lori Lightfoot and the Politics of Race and Crime - The New York Times

Some Republicans Want to Ban ‘Latinx.’ These Latino Democrats Agree. - The New York Times

Some Republicans Want to Ban ‘Latinx.’ These Latino Democrats Agree.

"In Connecticut, some Democratic lawmakers want to prohibit the use of the gender-neutral term in official government documents. The Republican governor of Arkansas does too.

March 1, 2023Updated 6:45 a.m. ET

State Representative Geraldo Reyes Jr., a Democrat from Waterbury, Conn., introduced legislation barring the use of the word “Latinx” in government documents.Jessica Hill/Associated Press

When Democrats in Connecticut introduced legislation to ban the word “Latinx” from government documents, they found themselves with unlikely allies: Republicans including Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas, who barred “Latinx” from state documents as her first official act.

Their reasons differ: Conservatives argue that the word, coined about 20 years ago as an inclusive, gender-neutral term to describe people of Latino descent, is a trope of liberal “wokeism.” But the bill making its way through Hartford was introduced by several Democratic members of the Black and Puerto Rican caucus. They argue, among other things, that the Americanized word disfigures the Spanish language and in doing so, is an act of cultural appropriation.

The situation has made for some of the oddest bedfellows in the culture wars. Ms. Sanders, who initiated her state’s ban in January, said the term “Latinx” was “ethnically insensitive and pejorative language.” Around the same time, she also forbade the teaching of “critical race theory” in Arkansas schools and the use of TikTok on state-issued devices — statements that have set the tone for her conservative administration.

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“One can no more easily remove gender from Spanish and other romance languages than one can remove vowels and verbs from English,” she said.

Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas signs an order banning the use of the term “Latinx” in government documents. Al Drago for The New York Times

In Connecticut, where the bill would bar the use of “Latinx” from government and state education documents, State Representative Geraldo Reyes Jr., who introduced the measure, called the term “offensive and unnecessary” in a statement. “The Spanish language has been around for 1,500 years, and it identifies male, female and neutral gender,” he said.

Representative Reyes, who represents Waterbury, cited the limited use of the word in Latin American countries and the lack of widespread discussion around its initial adoption.

His staff said the term has been used in state government documents, but infrequently.

He said that he did not intend his proposed legislation to be divisive, but the use of the word has stirred a passionate debate from Connecticut to Arkansas and beyond about “Latinx,” the value of inclusive language and the very idea of banning individual words.

The term “Latinx” emerged in the early 2000s. Its precise origins are unclear, springing from academia or activists or perhaps both.

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It was created to address a characteristic of Spanish that doesn’t exist in English: Spanish is among the many languages where words are gendered, and the male ending — here, “Latino” — is typically used to refer to a group broadly, even if it’s mixed-gender.

The x in “Latinx” serves a similar function as it does in Mx., the gender-neutral version of the honorifics Mr. or Ms.; it creates an alternative to “Latino” and “Latina.” The word was first added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary in 2018. Alternative terms exist, including “Latine” and even “Latin@.”

“The origin was specifically referring to people who didn’t want to be pigeonholed in the traditional gender binaries, but now it is about Hispanic culture in general,” said Orin Hargraves, a lecturer in semantics at the University of Colorado Boulder. “It is in line with everything that has been going on since the turn of this century of equalizing gender, the #MeToo movement, all of that together is one big bucket that you can put ‘Latinx’ into.”

Meilene Belmont, the transgender services manager at Translatinx Network, a New York City-based advocacy and support group for transgender people, embraces the term for its sense of inclusion. She said “Latina” is her preferred term as a transgender woman, though she values “Latinx” for peers who feel differently.

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“I believe that ‘Latinx’ is for anyone, for anyone who identifies as trans, gay, bisexual, cis gender — anyone,” Ms. Belmont said. “The X at the end stands for everybody.”

Some critics, like United States Representative Ruben Gallego, a Democrat who represents Arizona and has spoken out about his distaste for the term, reject “Latinx” not because of its attempt at inclusivity, but because, he says, it has been imposed by outsiders on a community. In an interview, Representative Gallego said he has asked his staff not to use it.

Others take issue with the “x” itself: It is not a plural ending original to the language, and they argue that the letter’s inclusion whitewashes a Spanish word. The Royal Spanish Academy, which oversees the most authoritative dictionary in the language, has not approved it.

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But attempts to restrict the language via government decree have also drawn criticism.

“Hispanic, Chicano, Latino, Latinx, Latine, Latino American — none of those terms encompass everyone in our community,” John Lugo, the director of Unidad Latina en Acción, a Connecticut-based workers advocacy organization, said in a statement. He has called Connecticut’s effort to bar the term “an attack on our diversity.”

“We should not be policing the language that people are using to describe their identity,” Mr. Lugo said.

The word “Latino” was first added to the U.S. census in 2000; before that, starting in 1980, the survey’s questions about ethnicity used the word “Hispanic.”

“At the time, similar conversations arose about the appropriateness of that term," said Mark Hugo Lopez, the director of race and ethnicity research at the Pew Research Center. Critics then argued that “Hispanic” was a label foisted upon people, not one they selected for themselves. Today, respondents to Pew’s polls regarding how they define themselves prefer country of origin, like Mexican American, or Cuban American, Mr. Lopez said.

Some concerns about “Latinx” echo that 1980s debate: “It’s a very white term, and a white term shouldn’t represent a nonwhite population,” said Victoria Almazan, 20, a psychology student at the University of Connecticut, who supports the Connecticut legislation. (There is also a movement in Spanish-speaking countries to create gender neutral alternatives.) The Republicans in Arkansas, Ms. Almazan added, were right too — but for the wrong reasons.

“I think inclusivity is important, but it’s better to find a different word to use,” she said.

“I think inclusivity is important, but it’s better to find a different word to use,” said Victoria Almazan, 20, a psychology student at the University of Connecticut.Luis Diaz for The New York Times

In December, Progreso Latino Fund, part of the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven, a philanthropic organization, voted on a change to its mission statement. Instead of “Latinx,” Progreso chose “Latine” as a gender-neutral term, said Liana Garcia, the fund’s staff liaison, because of its familiar Spanish word terminus — like the endings of “leche” and “carne,” Spanish for milk and meat.

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“We decided that ‘Latine’ would be more in tune with the Spanish language,” Ms. Garcia said. “It was the way of equitably valuing everyone’s dignity.”

For all the political and academic debate, “Latinx” seems of little concern to many people who describe themselves as Latino or Hispanic. That’s mostly because it’s largely unknown: According to a 2019 poll conducted by the Pew Research Center, just about a quarter of Hispanic Americans were familiar with the term, and only 3 percent used it to refer to themselves.

About two years later, an Axios-Ipsos Latino Poll taken in partnership with Noticias Telemundo showed about half of the respondents of Spanish-speaking origins had no objection to being referred to as Latinx.

“If it’s more inclusive, that’s a good thing, I don’t see anything wrong with that,” Marvin Estrada, 34, a cook at a local restaurant, said on a recent afternoon in Stamford. “But honestly, I hadn’t heard the word until today.”

Marvin Estrada, a cook in Stamford, Conn., had not heard the term “Latinx” but said he didn’t object to it.Luis Diaz for The New York Times

As debate over the bill continued at the Capitol in Hartford, Natalie Betancur, a nurse in Stamford, said she had heard the word, but only in the news and not among her peers. “If someone wanted to be referred to as Latinx, I would have no problem with that,” said Ms. Betancur, 39. “I would just ask that they have patience with me and not get mad as I get used to it.”

Trying the term’s unfamiliar syllables out for the first time, Briggit Barzola, 29, a restaurant worker in Stamford who grew up in Lima, Peru, said it might grow on her.

“We would just have to get accustomed to it, but we had to come to the United States and get accustomed to the culture here,” Ms. Barzola said. “We can get accustomed to new things — it just takes time.”

Wesley Parnell contributed reporting.

Sarah Maslin Nir covers breaking news for the Metro section. She was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for her series “Unvarnished,” an investigation into New York City’s nail salon industry that documented the exploitative labor practices and health issues manicurists face. @SarahMaslinNir"

Some Republicans Want to Ban ‘Latinx.’ These Latino Democrats Agree. - The New York Times